


nobody talks about

by spidermooned (softlyblue)



Series: Real Heroes of New York 'verse [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: (uncle ben), Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Past Character Death, Trauma, at some point i will write the comfort to this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 18:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17513960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/spidermooned
Summary: So nobody talks about breaking.Or at least, nobody talks about breaking 'til you're broke.





	nobody talks about

**Author's Note:**

> im very stressed n very writers-blocked n very sad so voila

So nobody talks about breaking.

Peter once stays the night at Matt's flat. He rings May and tells her where he is, because she trusts Matt, thinks he's a responsible adult or something like that, and she approves of his choice in Respectable Older Man To Replace Previous Father Figure or something. She's been reading a lot of armchair psychology books about raising children, in the last year, and Peter wonders whether she's looking for an excuse for the Spider-Man thing, like she's looking for something to blame that isn't herself or him.

But here he is, anyway, staying the night at Matt's place. He rung May, but he didn't tell her the full story - he never does. Two cracked ribs and they _hurt,_ they really do, because he has healing powers but they don't do anything to dull the pain. Once, when he met Logan, he asked him if it hurt every time, and Logan let his claws extend with a menacing _shii-k_ and asked _what do_ you _think, kid?_

 

Matt's place. Cracked ribs. (Two.)

When Peter stays over, he always sleeps on the sofa, because Matt would try and give him the bed and Peter doesn't want to have to cope with that. He _knows_ Matt has trouble sleeping, but he knows it the same way he knows Antarctica exists - it's somewhere, of course, and it definitely happens, and presumably some people have seen it in the flesh, but Peter will never ever have the chance to see it, and it doesn't cross his mind often enough to be a real problem. When Peter stays over, Matt always offers the bed, and Peter always says the sofa is more comfortable, because he hates the feel of Matt's sheets against his hyper-sensitive skin.

He thinks Matt can tell that he's lying. But maybe Matt's grateful, or tired, or _Matt,_ because he never questions it. Just grunts, pressing a hand against the bit of him that hurts, and staggers off into his room.

And now it's the early hours, New York alive out the window, and Peter can hear the sounds.

So nobody talks about breaking, and it's another Antarctica thing, another Matt's sleeping problems, something Peter _knows_ is going on but something he's so detached from, it might as well not exist. He's sitting on the sofa, and before when he stayed at Matt's he was so exhausted he slept through the noises, but now the pain in his ribs is just keeping him awake, and there's a sad, disturbingly quiet whimpering coming from the bedroom. Peter knows Matt's asleep, because he'd never make a sound if he was awake.

Wade says it's the Catholicism.

Wade blames most of Matt's problems on the Catholicism. It's a joke in the daytime.

Not daytime now.

So Peter's sitting on Daredevil's sofa, which is red because that's the colour blood is and Matt doesn't want to stain, and he's holding his ribs together and every breath hurts and Daredevil is having a bad dream in the room next to him and he _doesn't know what to do._ Matt never shows weakness. Matt's the Man Without Fear. Matt's Matt.

"Matt," Peter says, into the darkness - the lightness really, the purple garish billboard flashing into the room, flickering mirrored advertisements on his face. He puts a drone into his voice, like he's just woken up, and pushes his thumb down on his ribs to get a truly authentic hiss of pain. "M-Matt," and his voice breaks entirely unintentionally, and he hears Matt wake up.

"Peter," Matt's in the room in three seconds, and that's another thing Wade says the Catholicism is to blame for - Matt being able to go from flat-out unconscious to fully aware and planning his next move, darting all the obstacles, his eyes flickering around the room. "You okay?"

"Hurts," Peter whispers miserably. It isn't a lie, so his heart doesn't skip, and Matt's head is cocked to one side, all shrouded in darkness. Peter can see wet tracks on his cheeks.

"What hurts," Matt says, not a question, moving into the kitchenette, hands sorting through the first aid kit laid out on the table. As he moves he scrubs his face, and it could be to sort out an itch, or to rub sleep away, and Peter gives him the benefit of the doubt.

"Everything," he says, and it isn't a lie.

Matt helps him in silence and they sit together on the sofa, and Peter doesn't know which one of them falls asleep first.

 

So nobody talks about breaking, and Peter joins the silent hordes, because if he doesn't talk about it then maybe it isn't happening or it's Antarctica, existing far away from him, not any of his business at all.

Sometimes he starts shaking in class, so bad that he can't hold his pen, and he has to use Ned's notes later on, copying them up once his hands obey him. Ned's noticed. MJ's noticed. Neither of them say anything, because he doesn't talk about it, so neither do they.

Peter's read comic books about Cap and Tony, and they talk a lot about _patrols._

 

He doesn't go on _patrol._ He used to, at the start, before the Vulture and the mess of Homecoming, back when real danger was an Antarctica away from what being Spider-Man was; Spider-Man used to stop bag snatchers and punch rapists and help people cross the road. He used to spend hours dancing on the edge of buildings so people could get YouTube hits, and sometimes he still does, but nowadays he keeps the suit on all the time - and no, not in an obsessive way, he just wants to be _prepared -_ and when he hears a commotion, when he looks on Twitter and sees something happening, or just when he's nearby, then he's out and on it. He spends a few hours every night hanging around Queens, webbing through the air, alive and on top of it and soaring, but he doesn't count that as a patrol; just as a reminder.

_Hey, guys, Spider-Man's still here and he's not leaving any time soon._

 

Maybe they're patrols, then, but he doesn't label them as such, and he doesn't have a schedule, and it isn't like he finds nothing to do. Every time he goes out he finds someone to help, someone to save, someone to stop, and they thank him - sometimes they tell him to go fuck himself - and sometimes Wade is there, or Clint, or Kate, or someone else. Tommy, sometimes. More frequently now. Matt never, because Matt's a being of the Kitchen and nothing else. They're there in the periphery, and they don't talk about it either.

Makes Peter feel better about it.

Wade talks, though.

Wade talks _all the time_ and about _everything._

 

"Last night I heard voices so fucking loud I cut my ear off just to make them shut up," Wade says conversationally, tangling his gloved fingers in the cheese that drips from his pizza slice, "And I woke up and I forgot I'd done it, yeah, and this is the funny bit, I'd taken a bunch of selfies of myself lookin' like fuckin'. Wotsisname the painter, and sent 'em to Nathan 'cos he hates that sort of thing, and I put my ears in the fridge and they made all the food all gross. This is good fucking pizza, baby boy. Where'd you get it?"

"Uh, Romeo's on fifth," Peter says indistinctly, through a huge mouthful of pizza. He likes Wade.

Wade is big, and he could kill Peter a hundred different ways with just one hand, and he doesn't, and that's why he likes him so much. Maybe it's a fucked-up standard to hold people to, but Peter doesn't know any other way to be.

When Wade touches him, he hugs him or he pats him on the back or he ruffles his hair (sans mask) or he gives him a high-five. Peter leans into the touch, burrows into it like some sort of starving animal, which is stupid because May's always hugging him and Ned and MJ are always tangled up in him - but Wade is different, because Wade _could_ hurt him, if he wanted to, and he doesn't.

Peter wonders if Wade ever cries.

 

And he's so fucking overwhelmed sometimes.

He isn't sad. Ben is dead and that makes him sad, but it makes him so sad that it travels through the sadness and into something else, some unreal dream world where nothing matters and he spends the whole night staring at his ceiling, at the constellations of the stars he and Ben stuck there the first year Peter came to live with them. He wants to cry about it and he feels bad that he doesn't, and he can't talk to May because it would only hurt her more, so he sits and he stares and then he dresses up as Spider-Man and goes to find someone to talk to.

He's so overwhelmed, but nobody talks about it.

Kate is a good person to fight alongside, because she makes jokes that are sometimes funny and she seems just real enough, just young enough, to get Peter in a way that Matt and Wade and Clint and Tony and everyone else just can't - there's a generation gap, or something, something sticking, but Kate is nineteen and hasn't a clue what she's doing and sometimes she swears in the middle of a fight and bitches about flatmates, and Peter likes her and he's so afraid that she won't like him back.

She does. Kate Bishop is pure fury, five foot six of purple anger and long black hair and marching for the rights of others and hugging stray dogs, and when she sees Peter she gives him a fist bump and tells him he's doing a good job.

"Hey, Spidey."

"Hawkeye," Peter flips around and fires a salute.

She's flinging off arrows so fast it's basically like she's firing a gun, and her target is one of the weird alien people that must have escaped from Baby Nova down in Arizona when the last prison ship went back up to the Guardians. Peter makes a mental note to call the kid, because while Sam is kind of a bitchy little princess, he's still a baby in the game and he's stranded all on his own up in Arizona, in the desert with all the freaky alien totem gods and the weird shit New York never has to deal with. At least with him and Kate, they can pin down one of the little green bastards; it's when they're a multitude they're hard to cope with.

"How's things," she yells down at him, when he's tying the alien up with webbing. It's snarling, trying to spit green acid. "Never get to see you anymore, Spidey. Wade's got you hidden away."

"Haven't seen Wade in a week and a half," he says. She jumps down, lithe as a cat, and rolls onto the street to stand next to him.

"He's in Canada?"

"Ireland. With Na- with Cable."

Kate smiles, sweat sticking her dark hair to her forehead, her fringe mostly held back by a purple headband. They stand next to the green alien, waiting for pickup, and it's no longer an incongruous sight for the occasional bystander scurrying past the mouth of the alleyway, two skinny figures in purple, in red and blue, standing next to a slimy green thing dribbling acid from its nostrils. "That's sweet."

"They're sweet."

After Captain America (the Sam Wilson one, not the Steve Rogers one or the Bucky Barnes one) comes to take the alien away, dragging it by the collar through the streets all glinting American pride, Kate and Peter lean against an alley wall, and wait until nobody's watching, and then Kate turns to him and says, "Food? My place? We live near a burrito place now. Good burritos."

Kate left her house last month, as far as Peter can remember, when the whole news broke about Bishop Senior being tangled up in Madame Masque's drug rings in LA, when Kate skipped the house with only what she was wearing and her bow slung across her hip. For a few weeks she'd dropped off the face of the earth, and Clint had started moping around rooftops asking if anyone had seen her, and then she reappeared one day saying she was living with Tommy and nobody should try and find where she was. Living with _Tommy,_ who's only technically not homeless because he runs too fast to be found squatting.

"Follow me," she says, and she's running across the rooftops, a silhouette against the moon. With easy rhythm, he leaps up to follow her, flying through the air alongside her heavy footsteps - running boots, and the bow against her shoulder.

He wonders sometimes if he should ask her how she's doing, but he doesn't know how to open the conversation without making her hate him, and she's older and she's living with Tommy and she's always with Clint and maybe Peter's just too scared to ask.

He doesn't. Kate gets five burritos, one for her and two for the two boys with super-metabolisms, and they sit in the empty house Tommy's squatting in and make up stories about the faces in the damp walls, and when Peter falls asleep sitting in Tommy's lap nobody tells him to fuck off.

He wakes up in the middle of the night gasping from a nightmare, and Kate hands him a glass of water, and they don't talk about it.

Which is fine.

 

So nobody talks about breaking, even if they know it's going on. Tony goes weeks, months without talking to him - fine, fine, Peter isn't a child, he's grown enough to know he doesn't have to be coddled - and then there are days where he feels like if Tony doesn't see him, something inside of the man will break. He rings Peter all frantic, says he's had a breakthrough, updates, news, and Peter is driven out to the Compound to see Tony all dark shadows and gaunt cheeks, flapping his hands about and yelling.

He pushes Tony into bed.

Peter spends nights staring at the stars on the ceiling, and then going out and exhausting himself into getting a few hours sleep. He snaps a lot of rubber bands against his wrists, because when they sting he remembers where he is - not a street, not an airport, not a planet, not the air. He's in third period math. Ned is looking at him funny, and nothing is wrong.

Nothing is wrong. He doesn't feel safe, and nothing is wrong, and sometimes he crams his fist into his mouth so that nobody will hear him when he cries and shakes back and forth in the clutches of whatever fucking spasm he has, whatever sets him off. He can't look at oranges, because there'd been a net of them in Ben's shopping when he was shot, and they'd bounced over the pavement and people had stood on them and they squished and exploded, broken wet juice all over the street. Ben dying in his arms.

"You should talk about it," says Matt, very carefully not looking at him.

It's sunset, and they're sitting on the edge of a wall, swinging their legs down the building and watching pigeons take shits from mid-air.

Peter doesn't say anything, which in itself is the statement.

"I don't, but don't be like me, kid. Be better."

Be better.

Peter looks out at the chemical sky, and wonders if he isn't so far gone that there isn't any better to _be._ Nobody talks about breaking until you're broke.

He shrugs, and there's a scream from a distant street, and then the two of them are up and running, and they still aren't talking about breaking.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @sweetlyblue or @cthulhu_twt 
> 
> leave a comment or a kudos r summat, n thank u very much for reading


End file.
